A Comparison of Page Replacement Algorithms

A virtual memory system needs efficient page replacement algorithms to decide which pages to evict from memory in case of a page fault. Over the years many algorithms have been proposed for page replacement. Each algorithm attempts to minimize the page fault rate while incurring minimum overhead. As newer memory access patterns were explored, research mainly focused on formulating newer approaches to page replacement which could adapt to changing workloads. This paper attempts to summarize major page replacement algorithms proposed till date. We look at the traditional algorithms such as LRU and CLOCK, and also study the recent approaches such as LIRS, CLOCK-Pro, ARC, and CAR.